Two years ago, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry introduced the Kobe Assist, a new statistic that "proves that missing shots is sometimes just as valuable as making them." Goldsberry's analysis was interesting, but it left out a key component: the dunkpass. You see, Goldsberry examined what percentage of a player's missed…»1/07/15 11:29pm 1/07/15 11:29pm

This week the director of research at Google, a fellow named Peter Norvig, published on his blog the results of a fascinating deep-dive into the English language. If you're at all interested in letter frequency or word frequency, you owe it to yourself to at least skim Norvig's post. Essentially the researcher who in… »1/13/13 10:15am 1/13/13 10:15am

For just the second time, the Baseball Writers' Association of America has given its voters the option of having their Hall of Fame ballots made public. Of the 569 voters who cast ballots, only 108 chose to reveal who they voted for. (Of course, many more discussed their selections in their own columns—194 of them, … »1/10/13 10:10am 1/10/13 10:10am

Mike Tomlin iced the kicker twice last night, but with an unfortunate twist: First, he called a timeout on his own kicker, Shaun Suisham, who proceeded to miss a 54-yarder. Then he stopped the Titans' Rob Bironas just as he was about to attempt the game-winning 40-yarder. Bironas waited two minutes and nailed the… »10/12/12 4:05pm 10/12/12 4:05pm

Out of the 22 playoff games in the first two rounds of the MLB playoffs, 12 have featured at least one team on the brink of elimination, and six of those will have been sudden death for both teams. Bud Selig's new postseason format puts a lot more weight on single games, which has led many players, writers, and fans … »10/12/12 3:30pm 10/12/12 3:30pm

The Athletics and the Yankees clinched their respective division titles on the same day, but the paths they took to get there were very different. The A's budget freight train slammed through a Rangers squad that had sat atop the AL West for over 170 consecutive days, while the Yankees barely edged the Orioles despite… »10/04/12 3:15pm 10/04/12 3:15pm

With three weeks to go in the season, over half of baseball is still in the race. Seventeen teams are within five games of a playoff spot. You might think that's mostly due to the new second wild card, and that's the case in the NL. With all three division leaders comfortable and the Braves safe at the first wild… »9/13/12 10:20am 9/13/12 10:20am

The Bears' Pro Bowl corner Charles Tillman was promoting his Cornerstone Foundation in a suburban Chicago runner's shop, when he was approached by a teenaged girl. She was the daughter of the store's owner, and she was just killing time doing her math homework, when she came across a problem she thought he'd be… »6/15/12 10:15am 6/15/12 10:15am

Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Some players' post-NFL careers are a little different.»5/24/12 6:20pm 5/24/12 6:20pm

The last time we played around with sportswriter analytics, we wondered if we could algorithmically determine a column's author based on his favorite words. (We could!) For a followup, I decided to look at the readability of different writers. Reading level is a nebulous concept and hard to define precisely, but we… »5/22/12 9:30am 5/22/12 9:30am